When I came up with the idea for my film, I knew that it would need a script and I knew I would have to write it but it wasn’t until the idea was given the green light that I actually started to come to terms with that fact. Writing a script for a short film was completely new to me, and I even felt a bit under-qualified for doing it considering I had never done any script writing classes offered at uni. Despite this, I was keen to give it a crack in the interest of trying something new, and also because it was my idea and someone else writing the script simply wouldn’t do.

The script writing process was a challenging one for me, particularly in the early stages. It took me a while to get going, perhaps because of lack of experience in script writing coupled with uncertainty about the desired tone of the film. However, I found that if I just wrote out the dialogue as it came into my head without being self conscious or uncertain, I started to get into a flow. I got stuck a couple of times in the middle section, but the most challenging part to hash out was the ending. I wasn’t sure how I was going to shape the script in such a way that led to some sort of resolution or closure effect. In the end, I arrived at a conclusion quite organically, without having to force it too hard.

Writing the script really did feel like a big step in the actual ‘translation’ of my observation into film. The process of turning a simple observation/memory of a night into a script with characters and plot was quite a drastic one. Having said that, I am confident that the overall message conveyed in the initial observation comes across strongly in the script I’ve written, despite being transformed into a very different form and ultimately being conveyed through a very different medium. I was happy with the first draft of the script, and I think I’ll be more confident writing scripts in the future now that I’ve got a bit of experience under my belt.